The Joy Luck Club

joyHigh-context Cultures and Low-context Cultures The contentment passel Clubexplores the clash surrounded by Chinese subtlety and Ameri john grow. One steering of actualiseing the difference is to look at intercourse in these cultures. Chinese culture provide be classified ad as a high-context culture and American culture as a low-context culture. First I will define these terms, then explain the meaning of these two categories, and finally apply them to The Joy mass Club. * Cultureis the way of living which a group of people has developed and transmitsfrom one generation to the next.It includes concepts, skills, habits of thinking and acting, arts, institutions, shipway of relating to the world, and agreement on what is significant and necessary to know. Race, ethnicity, class, and sex argon cultural creations they derive their meanings from the culture. * Contextis the whole situation, background, or surround connected to an event, a situation, or an single(a). * Ahig h-context cultureis a culture in which the individual has internalized meaning and data, so that little is explicitly say in written or spoken messages.In conversation, the attendee knows what is meant because the speaker and attender share the same knowledge and assumptions, the listener can piece unneurotic the speakers meaning. chinaware is a high-context culture. * Alow-context cultureis one in which information and meanings are explicitly express in the message or communication. Individuals in a low-context culture expect explanations when statements or situations are unclear, as they ofttimes are. Information and meaning are non internalized by the individual save are derived from context, e. . , from the situation or an event. The United States is a low-context culture. High-context Cultures In a high-context culture, the individual acquires cultural information and meaning from obedience to authority, through mirror image and by imitation. To acquire knowledge in t his way and to internalize it, children must(prenominal) be carefully trained. High-context cultures are highly perpetual and slow to change, for they are rooted in the past one example is the Chinese utilisation of ancestor worship. They are in like manner unified and cohesive cultures.In such cultures, the individual must know what is meant at the covert or unexpressed train the individual is supposed to know and to react appropriately. Others are expected to understand without explanation or specific details. Explanations are insulting, as if the speaker regards the listener as not knowledgeable or socialized enough to understand. To members of a low-context culture, speakers in a high-context culture count to guggle around a subject and never to get to the point. The bonds among people are very salutary in a high-context culture.People in authority are personally and literally responsible for the actions of subordinates, whether in government, in business, or in the fami ly. (In the U. S. , on the some other(prenominal) hand, the general practice is to find a fall guy or scapegoat who takes the blame for those with more power and status. ) In a high-context culture, the forms (conventional ways of behaving) are important the individual who does not observe the forms is perceived negatively the negative judgments for an individuals bad behavior may extend to the entire family.In embarrass or awkward situations, people act as though zilch happened. Individuality, minor disagreements, and personality clashes are ignored, so that no action has to be taken. Taking action tends to be taken seriously, because once started an action must generally be completed. Individuals cant stop an action because they change their minds, because they develop another interest, because unforeseen consequences arise, or because something better comes along.Consequently on that point is greater caution or even reluctance to initiate an undertaking or to give a promise. Chinese parents may overlook a childs behavior, because they expect that the strong family tradition, which is found on ancestors, will cause the child ultimately to be prolong properly. The impact of Low-context and High-context Cultures inThe Joy set Club In a low-context culture, as Edward T. Hall explains, Most of the information must be in the transmittable message in order to make up for what is missing in the context (both internal and external). In a low-context culture change is rapid and easy bonds between people are looser action is undertaken easily and can be changed or stopped once initiated. The lets inThe Joy Luck Clubexpect their girls to obey their elders and so learn by obedience, by observation and by imitation, as they did in China. Their elders did not explain. Because the buzz offs internalized values and knowledge, they seem to assume that knowledge is innate and that it is present in their daughters and only has to be brought out or activated.The in ternalization is so psychologically complete and so much a part of the mothers identities that they speak of it as physical. Am-mei, for instance, sees in her mother my own true nature. What was beneath my skin. Inside my cram (p. 40) to her, connection to her mother or filial respect is so deep it is in your bones (p. 41). But in this country, the mothers warnings, instructions, and example are not supported by the context of American culture, and so their daughters do not understand. They resent and misinterpret their mothers alien Chinese ways and beliefs.Similarly, the mothers do not understand wherefore they do not have the kind of relationships with their daughters that they had with their mothers in China. The Joy Luck mothers were so close to their own mothers that they saw themselves as continuations of their mothers, like stairs. The communication problems that arise when one speaker is from a high-context culture and the other is from a low-context culture can be seen in the conversations of June and Suyuen, My mother and I never really understood one another.We translated each others meanings and I seemed to hear slight than what was said, while my mother heard more (p. 27). June looks for meaning in what is verbalise and does not understand that her mother omits important information because she assumes her daughter knows it and can infer it her mother, on the other hand, looks for meaning in what has not been stated and so adds to what has been stated explicitly and comes up with meanings that surprise her daughter.The difficulties of growing up in a family from a high-context culture and living in a low-context culture appear in other Asian-American writers. The narrator of Maxine Hong KingstonsThe Woman Warrioris otiose to decide whether figures she sees are real persons or ghosts, whether stories she is told are true or fiction, what the meaning of those stories is, why she is told the stories, and whether an event really happens or is i magined. The Talk write up One way of maintaining and instructing children in traditional ways which Chinese immigrants adoptive is the traditional Chinese talk story.According to Linda Ching Sledge, the talk story served to redefine an castellated immigrant culture by providing its members immediate, ceremonial access to ancient lore it also retained the structure of Chinese oral wisdom (parables, proverbs, formulaic rendering, high-flown biography, casuistical dialogue). In the talk-story the narrator expects the listener to grasp the point, which is often not stated (unlike the WesternAesops Fables). Tan adopts the Chinese talk story in the mothers warning stories to their daughters.The talk story serves another function in this clean E. D. Huntley explains, Talk story enables women who have been socialized into silence for most of their livestheJoy Luckmothers, for instanceto reconfigure the events of those lives into acceptable public utterances painful experiences are re cast in the language of folk tale cautionary reminders become gnomic phrases real life takes on the contours of myth. More significantly, the act of performing talk story allows the storyteller to retain a comfortable distance between herself and her audience.Thus, the storyteller manages in some fashion to maintain the silence to which she is accustomed, as well as to speak out and share with others the important stories that have shaped her into the person that she is. An issue for both mothers and daughters is determination a voice, that is, finding a way to express the essential self. Themes inThe Joy Luck Club Identity. The stories tell of events which shape the identities of the mothers and daughters and give direction to their lives.Though David Denby is speaking of the movie, his description applies equally well to the novel, each story centers on a second gear of creation or self-destruction in a womans life, the moment when her individuality becomes fixed forever. The mothers do not question their identities, having come from a stable culture into which their families were integrated. Their daughters, however, are confused about their identities. Communication between American daughters and Chinese mothers.The mothers see their duty as encouraging and, if necessary, pushing their daughters to deliver the goods therefore, they feel they have a right to share in their victor (the Chinese view). The daughters see the mothers as trying to live through them and thereby preventing them from developing as separate individuals and from leading independent lives (the American view). The splice of the Chinese mothers and Chinese daughters. The Chinese mothers form a continuity with their mothers in China, a connection which they want to establish with their American daughters.Love, bolshy, and redemption. Throughout there exists what David Gates calls a ferocious love between mother and daughter both in China and in this country. But the women also dr op off loss, which ranges from separation to abandonment to rejection, in the mother-daughter relationship and in the male-female relationship. Sometimes the loss is overcome and the love re-established. Connection of the past and the present. The mothers past lives in China affect their daughters lives in this country, just as the daughters childhood experiences affect their identities and adult lives.Power of language. Without proficiency in a common language, the Chinese mothers and American daughters cannot hap. St. Clair cannot communicate with his wife, and so he changes her name and her birth date, taking away her identity operator as a tiger. Lena St. Clair mistranslates for her father and for her mother. Also, words have great power. expected value and reality. The mothers have great hopes for their daughters their expectations for their daughters include not just success alone also freedom.They do not want their daughters lives to be determined by a rigid society and convention, as in an arranged marriage, and do unhappy as theirs were. The American reality fulfilled their expectations in unlooked-for and unacceptable ways. Another way of expressing this theme is The American Dream and its fulfillment. Chinese culture versus American culture. This conflict appears throughout the novel, from the struggles of the mothers and daughters to Lena St. Clairs Chinese eyes and American appearance and Lindo Jongs Chinese face and her American face.